Flag of Malawi

How to read it

Section 2 of Malawi’s Constitution provides that Malawi shall have a national flag. The flag was adopted in 1964, at independence, Lex says; it is based on the flag adopted by the Malawi Congress Party in 1953, with the rising sun added in 1964. Norway’s Store norske leksikon describes three horizontal stripes of equal width, black, red and green from the top, with a red rising half sun on the black stripe. A different flag flew from 2010 to 2012; Parliament restored the 1964 flag in May 2012.

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The flag of 2010 to 2012

In 2010 President Bingu wa Mutharika changed the flag. Lex describes the change: the red and black stripes swapped places, and the rising sun was replaced by a whole white sun in the middle of the flag. Mutharika’s reason, as Store norske leksikon gives it, was that the flag should show that Malawi was now an economically developed country, not a developing one as the rising sun suggested. He argued that Malawi could not continue “to be at dawn in 2010 as we were in 1964”, Sapa-AFP reported, and the full sun was meant to say that Malawi’s promise was being fulfilled. The opposition objected, partly over the cost of the change, Store norske leksikon says.

Mutharika died in April 2012. In May 2012 Parliament approved a bill returning to the independence flag. The Speaker, Henry Phoya, argued that there had been no adequate consultation before the 2010 change and called the black, red and green stripes with the red rising sun a “sacred symbol” of Malawi’s nationhood. The flag with the rising sun is the one in use today.

Telling it from Kenya’s flag

Kenya’s flag has the same colours in the same order from the top, black, red and green, but its stripes are separated by narrow white stripes and it has a shield and two spears in the centre. Malawi’s has no white and a red rising sun in the black.